Bitwise CIO Points to MicroStrategy’s STRC Collapse as Sign Bitcoin Bear Market is Ending

Published by James Harris on July 2, 2026July 2, 2026

Two research calls dropped within 24 hours of each other: Tiger Research and Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan are both signaling that Bitcoin is in the final stage of its current bear market, with the catalyst for Hougan’s read coming from a surprisingly obscure corner of Strategy’s balance sheet.

Tiger Research’s analysts wrote that Bitcoin has likely entered the “final quartile” of the bear-market process, leaving room for one more liquidation leg while arguing the remaining downside is characteristic of late-cycle behavior rather than mid-cycle deterioration. Hougan’s read is more specific. In a post on Wednesday, he pointed to the breakdown of Strategy’s STRC preferred stock mechanism as the proximate trigger for Bitcoin’s slide below $60,000. STRC launched at a $100 par value with a 9% yield and an automatic rate-increase clause if the price fell below par. That clause escalated the yield to 11.5% as Bitcoin and MSTR shares declined, but STRC’s market price still dropped to $75, implying an effective yield of 15.4%. Strategy suspended the automatic defense on June 29, choosing instead to let STRC float and periodically sell BTC to cover dividends or buy back shares. For Hougan, that pragmatic capitulation reads as a classic late-cycle stress event resolving, not escalating.

The historical parallel that matters here is not a price chart. It is the pattern of levered corporate Bitcoin vehicles becoming involuntary sellers at cycle lows, which is exactly what the STRC mechanism, when it broke, threatened to become.

What makes both calls interesting is where institutional buyers are actually positioned. If institutions are treating the $60,000 range as accumulation rather than exit, the late-bear framing from Tiger Research gains more traction than it would in a cycle driven by retail momentum. Bitcoin ETF flows remain a cleaner read on that than any single analyst note, and sustained inflows during a period of corporate seller pressure would carry more weight than the price rebound to $61,400 that is currently driving the headlines. The four-year cycle framing both calls lean on is a heuristic with real limitations, and analysts skeptical of cycle-based positioning have reasonable grounds to push back on bottom-calling that relies heavily on it.

The more durable signal here is structural. Strategy’s shift from automatic rate defense to discretionary BTC sales changes how the market should price the company’s Bitcoin holdings going forward, introducing a seller that was previously committed to holding. Whether that overhang resolves quickly or slowly depends on how STRC trades in the coming weeks, and that is a variable neither call has fully priced in.